Socci’s View: What’s in a Patriot’s number?
The shot from the left wing falls short of the rim and before the rebound can be controlled, the defender who caused the miss is already sprinting to the other end. He is a step past halfcourt by the time his teammate’s outlet pass reaches him.
In all white, a purple number 4 on his back, he snags the basketball on the run and in only two dribbles reaches the foul line. No one else inside the gym at Eagle’s Landing High is anywhere near him as he lifts off, cupping the ball in his right hand, and throws down a rim-rattling dunk. Welcome to the introductory clip of Antonio Gibson’s basketball reel highlighting his athleticism for college recruiters on the MaxPreps website.
All-regional in hoops. A school-record holder in the 100 meters. An all-purpose star as a receiver, safety and returner in football.
Fast forward a couple of years and here’s Gibson again, No. 4 for East Central Community College in Decatur, Miss. He takes a handoff, bounces off would-be tacklers and escapes to the left sideline. He retrieves a punt, makes a U-turn and zig-zags down and across the field. And he dives to catch a pass in the back of the end zone. These are the openers of his Juco audition tape on Hudl, intended for four-year schools.
The University of Memphis takes notice. Gibson winds up there, switches to jersey 14, shifts from receiver to running back and impresses Washington’s NFL football team enough to be chosen 66th overall, in the third round of the 2020 draft.
Through four seasons, while his team drops a nickname, goes without one and adopts a new moniker, Gibson is identified by his No. 24 in burgundy and gold. Then in March 2024, he joins a new team, the New England Patriots.
The number 4, whether alone or accompanied by a second digit, has long been part of Gibson’s athletic identity. But after signing a three-year contract with the Pats as an unrestricted free agent in March, he was given No. 21. Returning Patriots Bailey Zappe and Joshuah Bledsoe already owned the rights to 4 and 24, respectively, and newly-signed quarterback Jacoby Brissett was assigned No. 14.
Now a month into the season, Zappe and Bledsoe are elsewhere. So is JuJu Smith-Schuster, whose preseason release from the team freed up his 7 to be claimed by Brissett, who’s had the number in seven of his nine years in the NFL.
This Sunday, that number will get the call again as Brissett starts at San Francisco. At some point, he’ll be joined in the backfield by Gibson and the number closest to his heart — a navy 4, outlined in silver and red, stitched onto the front and back of his white road jersey.
“It started with me in high school, then Juco (and) I tried to get it at Memphis, but the quarterback (Brady McBride) had it, so I went with 14,” Gibson recently explained. “Anything with a four, I’ve pretty much (had).”
In 2021, almost a half century after the NFL first standardized jersey numbers by position groups, the league relaxed its uniform code. Suddenly – well, as sudden as the process between a rule proposal by the Kansas City Chiefs and its approval by owners – more numbers became available to most players.
For running backs like Gibson, eligible numbers practically doubled from 30 (Nos. 20-49) to 59 (Nos. 1-49 or 80-89). For wide receivers, their world of numerical possibilities expanded from 10-19 and 80-89 to include 1-9 and 20-49.
Across the league, old jerseys were exchanged for new ones. And not just those belonging to offensive skill players.
Many of the most noticeable changes showed up on defense, much to the disdain of Tom Brady, an outspoken critic of the jersey-number swaps in his post-Pats, pre-FOX Sports careers. Calling the new rule “pointless” and “crazy,” Brady was concerned it would cause Tampa Bay teammates to confuse their blocking assignments, trying to instantly differentiate a safety from a linebacker from a cornerback.
Among his ex-teammates in Foxborough, the first to transform his identity was linebacker Ja’Whaun Bentley, who dropped 51 (the number of hard-nosed linebacking predecessors Bryan Cox and Jerod Mayo) in favor of 8 (worn longest as Patriots by punter Josh Miller and backup quarterback Brian Hoyer).
One number that didn’t immediately show up on a nautical-blue shirt was “0,” which the league didn’t allow until 2023. Available to everyone except offensive and defensive linemen, No. 0 went from banned to bountiful outside Foxborough.
Reportedly, head coach Bill Belichick wasn’t a fan of the idea and balked at the Chiefs’ 2021 pitch to change how on-field fashion was policed. None of his Patriots took the field as a zero.
Their starting point was No. 1, as worn in the past by Cam Newton and shared in 2023 by receiver Devante Parker and mascot Pat Patriot. Meanwhile, on 23 other NFL teams, players from Adrian Amos to Zach Pascal entered last season’s opening weekend as No. 0.
This past spring, however, under first-year head coach Mayo, second-year cornerback Christian Gonzalez requested and received 0, which he wore at the University of Oregon. Oddly, it’s the fourth number he’s had since being drafted 17th overall only 17 months ago.
Gonzalez was first given No. 50, per Belichick’s practice of branding rookies in the 50s, 60s and, if necessary, 70s (remember Gunner Olszewski as No. 72?). He played his first preseason in 19 and the four games of his injury-shortened regular rookie campaign in 6.
Meanwhile, his classmate at receiver Demario Douglas, a 6th-round pick, went from 60, the same as long-standing center David Andrews, to 81 in 2023. But this year, Douglas is back in the No. 3 of his youth in Jacksonville and college years at Liberty.
Uniform numbers mark football journeys, linking present to past and, often, current pros to their childhood idols.
Coming into his own as a youngster in New Jersey, three-phase star Jabrill Peppers wanted to play like Reggie Bush, so he wore the No. 5 that Bush wore at USC. At Paramus Catholic High. And at Michigan, in maize and blue. But as a Cleveland Brown and New York Giant defensive back, his favored 5 was off limits. When Peppers joined the Pats in 2022, Hoyer, by then in his third stint with the team, had No. 5. A year later, Hoyer was released, allowing Jabrill to get his high five.
Peppers has company in the Patriot Place chapter of the Reggie Bush fan club. It includes first-year teammate K.J. Osborn, a receiver whose current number is connected to Peppers’ alma mater.
“I started playing football when I was 7 years old,” Osborn recounted before Thursday’s practice. “I wore number 5 because my favorite player was Reggie Bush.”
But when Osborn joined the “Wolverines” youth team in his hometown of Yspsilanti, Mich., nicknamed for the Big Ten power nearby, he was handed a jersey honoring U-M star Charles Woodson.
“They gave me number 2, and I was pissed,” a smiling Osborn merrily continued. “I didn’t want number 2, but they were like ‘Don’t you know who number 2 is for the Michigan Wolverines?’”
Osborn learned in due time. And the more he learned about Woodson and the more he played, the more he loved the number they shared. Even as Osborn donned a 1 at IMG Academy in Florida, an 8 at the University of Buffalo, before transferring to Miami (Fla.), and a 17 as a Minnesota Viking, numero dos was his numero uno.
“I’ve always been trying to get back to it ever since (childhood),” says Osborn, who kindly leveraged the Pats’ offseason interest in him as a free agent into a reunion of sorts. “Right before I signed, I was talking to (senior personnel executive) Alonzo Highsmith. I said ‘as long as I get number 2.’”
You got it, Highsmith assured Osborn. Months later, he’s the middle man in New England’s 1-2-3 lineup of jerseys at receiver, between Ja’Lynn Polk (1) and Douglas (3).
If one’s number has an emotional attachment to a player, it can also have absolutely none whatsoever. Many, if not most players won’t have a say or don’t have a preference. As long as the number is on an NFL jersey they’ll gladly accept it. Others may have a number in mind, but not necessarily at heart. Some want to make a statement, fashion or otherwise, or simply stand out.
Remember Keyshawn “Just Give Me the Damn Ball!” Johnson? When the former USC star entered the NFL with the New York Jets in 1996, he sought to wear No. 3, only to be denied by the league. According to a report by Kevin Seifert of ESPN.com in 2019, Johnson was told that if he was drafted by a team that was out of 80s, he could choose between Nos. 10-19.
Wisely waiting for every other Jets receiver to get outfitted before him, Johnson’s patience paid off. He wound up with No. 19 and wore it for all 11 of his NFL seasons, making more than 800 receptions for four teams overall.
“I wasn’t just a unique talent, but a unique personality that could capture the fan base and have fans gravitate toward, you know, me,” Johnson told Seifert. “ When you saw No. 19, you automatically knew what that stood for and why it was that way.
“It was all about looking cool and different, and being someone that people could identify with. When you see a green No. 19 jersey, who is the first person you think of? When you see 19 in all of the NFL, you don’t think of [former San Diego Chargers receiver] Lance Alworth. You think of Keyshawn Johnson. And Lance is a Hall of Famer. It’s a unique and cool kind of thing.”
Here in New England, as The Boston Globe’s Christopher Price chronicled in a 2021 piece, associating names to a different number, 17, is neither cool nor kind to receivers. The most notable (and notorious) among them is Antonio Brown, who appeared in one game for the 2019 Patriots before being cut amid accusations of sexual assault.
Others, such as second-round picks Chad Jackson (2006) and Aaron Dobson (2013), simply failed to meet expectations on the field. Neither appeared in an NFL game beyond his third season. The last Patriots receiver to wear No. 17 was Kristian Wilkerson in 2021.
Punter Michael Palardy wore 17 in 2022 and his successor Bryce Baringer, who was 99 at Michigan State, took it over as a rookie in 2023. Off to a very promising 20-game start to his career, Baringer wears it well, though we have yet to see him run a route or catch a pass on a fake punt.
Whether sentimentality or style or superstition or something else determines who wears what, receivers seem to see themselves as sleeker and swifter in smaller numbers. Seifert’s 2019 reporting cited an informal survey of players by ESPN’s NFL Nation reporters, which revealing a perception that receivers in numbers 10-19 looked and moved better than peers whose jerseys bore 80-89.
UCLA processor of psychology, neuroscience and bioengineering Ladan Shams described to Seifert how our brains learn to associate larger numbers with heavier objects. For example, at the grocery store, she explained, we may see items sold by weight – the bigger the bag, the bigger the number. Our minds then create a connection.
“So if that’s the case, if there is an association in the perceptual system between larger written numbers with heavier objects, then that association may extend to human bodies and jersey numbers,” Shams said to Seifert. “Also, lighter bodies tend to be slender and they tend to be more agile. This association links the smaller numbers with being slender, lighter, faster. So there can also be an association between the magnitude of numbers and slenderness and agility.”
Since Seifert’s story, Shams has tested her hypothesis by conducting two related experiments. She published her findings in PLOS ONE, a peer-reviewed journal of the Public Library of Science, in 2023. Consistently, participants in her study discerned differences in body types – to them, players in tens and teens appeared thinner than 80-somethings – even when there was actually no difference in size.
On Thursday, as Osborn stood in a flashy pair of fluorescent-orange cleats he had just pulled from the drawer of his locker, with a No. 2 white practice jersey stretched over his shoulders, he was told of the UCLA study.
“That’s (her) area of expertise,” he said through a chuckle. “But with no education on it, I would agree.
“There’s something about that single-digit, like I said, it brings you back to that childhood, that natural (feeling) of just playing as a kid again. That ‘look good, feel good’ type of thing.”
Bob Socci is in his 12th season calling play-by-play for the Patriots Radio Network on 98.5 The Sports Hub.
